The present invention has been developed for use in contact sports in general, and association football (soccer) in particular. The invention will therefore be described herein with particular emphasis on the sport of football, though it should be understood that the ankle protector of the present invention is equally suitable for use in other contact sports such as rugby, American football and hockey—and indeed for use in non-contact sports to give protection against accidental contact with other players or equipment.
The use of protective apparel by footballers has become widespread at both professional and amateur level. Aside from the stresses and strains applied to an athlete's body by the performance of any physical sport, the most likely cause of an injury occurring during a football game is by the accidental, but often inevitable, contact between opposing players' feet and legs during the execution of a tackle. For this reason, most players wear shin pads to absorb such impacts.
Many commercially available shin pads now incorporate an ankle protector section stitched onto the main part of the shin pad, and adapted to be secured under the user's foot by means of an elastic loop or stirrup. However, such shin pad and ankle protector combinations tend to be cumbersome and uncomfortable for the user, and can restrict the range of motion of the ankle joint.
Separate ankle protectors are also available, which avoid the motion restriction problems associated with combined shin pad and ankle protection systems. However, existing ankle protectors suffer from shortcomings which at best make them uncomfortable for the user to wear, and at worst leave the user prone to injury. One such shortcoming derives from the typical construction of the ankle protector from conventional elasticated fabric material. In order to prevent the fabric material unravelling, the protectors are generally formed with a thick hem or seam—generally referred to herein as a “rib”—around the upper and/or lower apertures through which the user's foot passes when putting the ankle protector on. As the protector is designed to be worn tightly against the user's skin under a sock, these ribs can press into the skin of the user's foot and lower leg during a football game, causing severe discomfort—or worse, if a poorly timed tackle happens to impact at the exact location of a rib.
Another shortcoming of existing ankle protectors is that they tend to concentrate on providing compressive support to the ankle joint, so as to protect against ankle twists, strains and sprains. Whilst this kind of protection is important, it is at least equally as important for a footballer to be protected against impact during tackles. Existing ankle protectors tend to overlook this aspect, with the user's lateral and medial malleoli often left effectively unprotected, and protection for the Achilles tendon usually neglected altogether.
The present invention seeks to address the above issues by providing an improved ankle protector, developed particularly for use by footballers, which provides improved levels of comfort to the user by dispensing with the need for cumbersome ribs around the protector's apertures, without compromising the level of protection afforded to the user of the integrity of the protector. In preferred embodiments, the ankle protector also addresses the issues of providing enhanced impact protection to the user's malleoli and Achilles tendon.